The music is the message at B'nai Chaim

Rockin' and Shabbat are words rarely found in the vicinity of each other. Rabbi Barry Ulrych of Congregation B'nai Chaim in Murrieta thinks it's time to change all of that.

He has started a program at the synagogue called First Fridays, where on the first Friday of the month the standard Shabbat, or Sabbath, service is replaced by a musical service beginning at 6 p.m.

The motivation, Ulrych said, is to grow the congregation.

"What's behind all of this is we're in the 21st century and we're finding ways to be more attractive, more appealing to the congregants of this time," Ulrych said.

In particular, the goal is to attract younger families with children, he said.

"That is, I would say, the big challenge of this area," Ulrych said.

A 2000 study by the Glenmary Research Center showed that 3 percent of Riverside County residents were affiliated with a Jewish congregation.

Bev Oberlander, 59, said she has been a member of B'nai Chaim for about five years. She and her husband moved here from suburban Chicago area where, she quipped, there is a synagogue on every corner. That Glenmary Research Center study indicated about 8 percent of Cook County's 3 million residents are Jewish.

"It was really different coming here," Oberlander said. "This is a small synagogue and there is not a big Jewish population (in the area). It was a little bit of a culture shock."

But she is a fan of the Rockin' Shabbat concept, in which audience participation is encouraged and children are given the freedom to dance if the spirit moves them.

"I simply love the services that get the kids involved," she said. "It's very, very important in my perspective to bring the kids in. They're our future."

Jewish law lists 39 categories of work and activity that are forbidden on Shabbat, the period from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, and playing instrumental music has typically been forbidden for conservative Jews.

Ulrych said that idea of a Rockin' Shabbat service on the first Friday of every month was the "brainchild" of a member of the congregation, Joshua Ginsberg-Margo. Ginsberg-Margo, 44, plays guitar and sings at the musical services. His 13-year-old son Ethan accompanies him as a percussionist.

Ginsberg-Margo works as a software company executive, but is also a part-time rabbinical student and is conversant with Jewish law and well aware of the restrictions on instrumental music.

"Many, many Conservative schuls (synagogues) have a musical Shabbat service before the sun goes down," Ginsberg-Margo said. "So they're not actually in violation of any Jewish law, because they put the instruments down before it's actual Shabbat."

Standard Shabbat services start around 7:30 p.m. and last 90 minutes or more, Ulrych said. But First Friday services, he said, begin at 6 p.m. and conclude before 7 p.m., for the benefit of the young children. No standard service is offered that night.

Something of a rock 'n' roll descendant himself -- his father and uncle were members of the group The Tokens, which had a big hit in the early 1960s with "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" -- Ginsberg-Margo said this music is all liturgy-based. Although his dad accompanied him on percussion for the initial First Friday service in March, nobody is up there playing pop songs.